#i know theres other shows where theres an overarching theme of family but like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yonpote · 3 months

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ok heres how i split up the dnp eras (loosely based on dan's timeline in his interview w anthony)

2009-2011: the Sillies era :3 dan refered to it as being a dumb teen just posting cuz he was bored, which is like, thats what all of youtube culture was at this time. they met and like fell in love or whatever you know the lore dont you. phil moved from his parents home to his first apartment in manchester, and dan technically moved to uni but really he moved into phil's apartment to take advantage of his washing machine and ps1 and. yknow. other stuff. they officially moved in together in 2011 yippee hooray, the phanchester apartment holds a special place in my heart

2012-2013: THE SHIFT. they started getting Serious about youtube as a career, doing more stuff w the radio, superamazingproject started in 2011 but THE SHIFT is very easy to observe when you compare the first season of sap to the last season. ALSO. they were NOT A DOUBLE ACT AND NOT GAY 🙄. it could also be called the No Homo era lmao idk this is when a lot of shitty things were happening wrt leaked information, harassment of their families, and just generally becoming more in the spotlight especially while still in the closet being a horrible experience. but also, they moved to london and got cool opportunities with radio stuff and were starting to actually make a living on this shit.

2014-2016: Peak Dan And Phil™ Era. at the height of their popularity. they realized oh shit, we ARE a double act and not only does everyone enjoy us best as a double act, WE enjoy working together. tabinof, tatinof, dapgo, still doing the radio every month up until they start touring, 7 second challenge app, gamingmas, what the hell DIDNT they do during this time period (what they didnt do was uhh take care of themselves and not overwork and not blur their work and personal lives so much to the point where they felt like the whole apartment was a film set.)

2017-2018: Gay Softlaunch Era (aka post-baking aka glass closet) the baby steps toward authenticity, moved to the double apartment to separate work and life, ii's whole theme, dan talking abt depression, phil getting the quiff, both of them being gay as hell in every way other than saying it explicitly. important things of note: TRUTH BOMBS dropped, Interactive Introverts happened, still uploading gaming vids and honestly by the end you could feel their fatigue. and then they hiatused dapg.

2019-2022: ok these four years each feel like whole eras in themselves, but also theres an overarching theme. THE GAY ERA.

2019: im gonna futher split this year in half. first half- dad left to buy milk so other dad is taking care of us. rough six months for dannies im sure. important phil thing of note- he changed his film set from his "bedroom" to a fairly basic but cute shelf backdrop. honestly prob didnt wanna keep pretending that was his bedroom considering.... second half- DAN AND PHIL GAY. dan uploads his magnum opus. phil comes out via tweet. they go to japan and its really gay and it's The Trip to japan for them like yes they first went in 2015 and again in 2023, but Japhan 2.0 Was The One. what does this mean? proposal? anniversary? idk exactly but it was gay as hell dude and theyve talked about that trip with such love in their hearts.

2020: Phandemic (sorry that was bad) but also where tf is dan again? even with the big C-word happening, it was business as usual for phil, regular vids but make em gayer, caught a pigeon nbd, and end of the year introduces the Stereo app show Phil and Phriends where he's had chats with pj, louise, his brother, seth everman?????, and finally. dan reappears. they reveal that they bought and FULLY PLANNED a house together and are ready to move!

2021: they don't move house for another like six months! basically their house was (and is??) still being worked on AND they were in lockdown AND turns out at the end of last year, they were kicked from their Life apartment and were now living in the Work apartment so you can imagine what all of this can do to their psyche and lowkey they were getting sick of each other like it wasnt just bordering on phivorce it was nearly Phurder. Phidow. but to fill the time so that DOESNT happen, my favorite fucking thing ever happens: Lockdown Lads (and all the other names). the first taste of what a dnp podcast would sound like, with the added bonus of chaotic listener interaction. oh yeah also dan wrote a mental health guide book whatever (IM KIDDING I REALLY LIKE YWGTTN I WROTE LIKE TWO REVIEWS ON IT NOW) and they finally become Homosexual Homeowners. theres quite a bit more dnp content this year, dan being on phils channel a bit more, the phodcasts, dan's gay and not proud special.... oh yeah and hometown showdown i guess AND TEXT VIDEO 2!!! my favorite and my namesake!!!!!!!

2022: Prophecy Year..... but they didnt get married. dan returns with another longass video to say: hey i hate being a youtuber and also youtube majorly fucked me over. but also fuck that im gonna do a weird talk show and ALSO GO ON TOUR WITH THIS APOCALYPSE THEME! phil actually... slows down this year. more dan uploads than phil somehow??? but also Dan Is Leaving me is posted and i go completely insane and become the deranged individual you see today. WHICH FINALLY LEADS US TOOOOOO

2023-present: The Unhinged Era. dan's tour was a huge Emotional success for him but uh not without its hiccups due to management and all that and i think he and phil finally realize. Fuck It Who Cares. dan flies back to england FROM AUSTRALIA to make sure he can be with his future ex-husband on his birthday. CAKE HEART EMOJI. YELLOW PLAID SHACKET. they go on a gamer date and post a picture of playing footsies in a cab. THE PHUDE HAPPENS. they go to japan again and while this one will never be The One it was still a well earned holiday this time with bryony! and they took a bunch of very cute film camera pictures.... THIS IS ALL JUST THE FIRST HALF OF 2023 BTW. in phil news, he talks about going to therapy and figuring out how to manage his anxiety!!!! he changes his hair again!! he hires an editor, phan is his otp, he teases about the gaming channel a couple of times but so many of us already dropped any hope of that returning- OH WAIT WHAT THE FUCK?!!!? HUH!??!? they returned, and more chaotic than ever before. the gayness upped to the max, the Weirdness on full speed, the Horniness at Very Scary Levels Oh God Stop Talking About Dogging, phil can swear uncensored now???? and this energy has continued into today...

#the shift #softlaunch #myrambles #phan

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masonsystem · 1 year

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arkhamverse as its own universe is a media where they can afford to shake up the status quo, so its soooo disappointing that the utrh plot thread ended like That, considering that utrh's own ending had to be shitty in order to maintain the status quo (joker still gets to run around doing whatever). like the more i think about it the more apparent it becomes to me just how Freaking badly arkham knight adapted utrh cuz like wow. you ended an amazing franchise like this?

utrh had many conflicts, and a prominent one was an arguement of ethics on why the joker was still permitted to live and run wild in spite of the fact that joker killed him, batman's robin. in a meta sense, its (likely unintentionally) also a commentary and attack on how jason was able to be removed from the status quo yet the status quo of a batman and a robin and a joker kept turning its wheels without him.

but arkhamverse as its seperate universe isnt binded to the status quo, the joker gets to die and it ends with batman being unmasked etc etc etc. and this is one of the biggest reasons why arkham knight is so narratively unsatisfactory bc like... how could this utrh plot thread have ended? theres no joker to kill, so where does jason's story go?

arkhamverse was too married to its conflict with batman and joker, which on its own isnt a bad thing, but then it tried to keep the gas pumping after the joker died. this is why after 3 games (or 2 depending on who you ask) without even a passing acknowledgement of jason todd's existence, arkhamverse suddenly decides to bring jason in bc his canon conveniently exists in the intersection between batman's and joker's canons. adapting death in the family was easy work, hell theres hardly any substance in the original story and its really just a long winded work to stuff a kid in the fridge. so the game does just that. but unlike ditf, utrh is actually trying to say something. it's a story about father and son, about avengeance and revenge, about the morality of killing, etc.

...except now with a dead joker, there is hardly anything to say at all. and so arkham knight as a character narratively does nothing, and his impact on the storyline as a whole is so extremely shallow. he serves to initiate and then pad out the continuation of batman's and joker's conflict, and also other plot conveniences like bringing in a whole militia and all that. but thats really the extent of what he does. just like utrh, jason receives no proper closure in this game.

and whats really annoying is that HE COULDVE!!!! FUCK!!!! arkham knight's (and honestly? the entire franchise's and batman's mythos is general) overarching theme is FEAR, batman relying on fear to intimidate and exist as a vigilante, batman's fear of losing control to the joker inside of him, batman being born from the fear he felt when he lost his parents (and also fear of bats lmfao), his fear and grief from losing jason, etc. AND JASON!!!! jason's torture filled HIM with fear and hatred! and you know what one of the final quotes of the franchise is?

Scarecrow: Without fear, life is meaningless!

and you know what the ending of the franchise, as a closing love letter to batman's mythos, shouldve been an encapsulation of?;

It's without fear, that life can begin

bc like as much as batman's mythos is about fear, it's also about HOPE....

(too lazy to put batman's relation to hope in my own words so im borrowing other people's words instead LOL. both screenshots are from The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon, but the 2nd pic is referencing one of the nolan films. idk which one)

arkhamverse shouldve ended on a note of HOPE, jason's reform into the red hood shouldve been the highlight of the ending, not a barely glanced over sidenote. the fact that jason can continue living without being consumed by the desire to kill bruce is the biggest fuck you the baman could give to the joker, showing that batman as an entity was able to save a boy so far gone, and that jason still has hope for his life and future in spite of all that has been done to him, but instead it just gets glossed over! WHAT THE FUCK!!!! arkham knight was too obsessed with giving batman and joker an extremely epic interactive final finale cutscene (which ngl is so epic lol BUT NOT THE POINT) that it treated it's literal titular character as a side character similar to the likes of gotham's most wanted! WTFFFF.

(and instead of using the full knightfall ending to actually expand on jason's fate or reformation or whatever, we instead go thru 243 hellish riddler trophies to receive an extremely childish oh Ha ha Batman Can Never Die cutscene. like firstly the idea of locking the full ending behind all the riddler trophies is so unbelievably fucked and secondly FUCK UUUUUUU. full knightfall protocol shouldve been the default ending AND THEN 100% completion shouldve been some proper resolution on jason's end AT THE VERY LEAST.)

despite the potential to become something amazing, arkhamverse sadly became not unique in being another batman media that fails to become something phenomenal all due to it not properly acknowledging jason todd as a character and merely using him like a tool for dramatic but ultimately shallow story points. sad!

#my meta

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ihopethisendswell · 3 years

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Me and my OCs:

This isn't just about my pokemon oc's. No no no no. This is my journey of me having 0 Oc's ( not knowing what they where back then) to having far too many for my own good.

It started back in middle school, where it was one if those rare creative writing periods. We rarely get those, so of course I was excited. This was also when I started reading a lot of fantasy books, specifically YA novels. So my imagination ran wild, and I created my first oc.

Her name was ViraBlue. Yes that sounds like a online profile. Yes, she was very edgy. Yes , I tried to write a very bad story for her. And no, I'm not going to go into it. The only thing I will go into, is that I thought it would be cool for her to have a team. A five man band if you will. Teen Titans was my favorite show at the time, and I was getting introduced to anime AND I was reading wattpad due to my friend who suggested it to me. So this was spelled for disaster. Though I will say I realized my passion for creative writing. Even if my own writing was terrible.

I'm going to skip over all middle school and a bit of highschool to just say that my Oc's evolved. For example, ViraBlue was no longer her name. As of now her name is Elora. Also, her and her team are no longer just white people. Elora is a wonderful black woman such as myself, and honestly I feel FAR more attached to her than I did before. Also when remaking my ocs to be more diverse( both in race and in body diversity),I learned Asian is a umbrella term, so it doesn't just mean China or Japan. It also means Thailand, India, the Philippines, and much more! It really opened my eyes a lot to the world around me actually.

So yeah, you'd think that'll be it, right? WRONG. Cause theres more! A lot more. So much more I'm gonna but it on bulletin notes :)

Somewhere between highschool and middle school, I was very interested the pokemon protagonist, in terms of what they were like as individuals.

Now I know that that's very weird, given the majority of the protagonists are blank slates l, but two things. 1) Hilda's design has so much attitude that I REFUSE to believe she's a blank slate( eventhough she is) and 2) sun and moon brought back and older Red, with his own semblance of personality. I was so happy when it was announced.

But after searching the internet, and realizing the chance of me getting my preteen hands on the manga were low

So I did the only reasonable thing and make my own oc for each game and have them replace the player character as the main protagonist. Every main series game. Except the Kanto ones. I....I've had enough of kanto. I might change my mind later.

I'm actually almost done! All I have to do is finish USUM, and play emerald and heartgold and I'll be done.

I was so invested in this that I made myself a ( linear) timeline to keep track of things, as well as trying to find characters ages as a reference. Oh my god, that was a lot.

Then they're was that sequel idea that I had for my first Oc's story( the one with Elora). I didn't even finish the first story! Let alone start writing!

It didn't help that the setting of the story was a full erease universe and a timeskip into the future away from the original story. No I will not elaborate.

The main character's name is an ( sun?) elf Imani and she's tall ( duh) and really likes her history and her friends.

I then realized that these two stories where very important to me,so it would be best to work on them more to flesh them out......

Until I made a new set of characters for a supernatural thing. I literally just made a person,her brother, her friends, her brothers friend,her brothers love interest, and the siblings moms that aren't always there because one of them is basically the grim reaper but not really abd the other help with purifing damaged souls or something like that. Mind you, I have no specific story for them, except they live in New York and do stuff. That's it.

Now would be a good time to say that all of my ocs are LGBTQ+, and I don't mean this as a flex. I say this because they honestly have helped me trying to find myself. I still don't know what I am, or if my feelings are real, but I do know that these characters made me appreciate the change of it all. Like Elora and her team where all straight white people, and while there is nothing wrong with that, the more I changed, they've changed as well. Elora is now asexual biromantic. Now that's not what I'll exactly call myself, but it's kinda close. I think. Idk. Not to mention that I'm now more aware of the world around me, and the struggles people face( even if I'm still learning)

Anyway back to ranting.

CHOICE. OF. GAMES

How dare they exploit my love for character creation and choose your own story games!

Honestly, besides my own characters, and some outside factors, Choice of games made me aware that men liking men is real, and so is women liking woman, and that non-binary people exist!

For granted, I still didn't understand it at the time, but in Wayhaven chronicles I choose the men and women option and didn't look back.( I only played the demo cause I have no money)

Then I started playing a lot of wips, and somehow made 4 characters that reflect 4 play styles that I personally like playing.

Eventually they became so big in there own that I thought " these are the type of ocs that I'll just mess around with. No overarching story, just a good ol time" and for once I stuck by it.

Though for some reason I gave them a theme of the deck of suits????( Like diamond, heart, spades and clover).

There's Jamie( diamond). They're the shyest of the bunch. A lot more withdrawn and tend to freak out a lot( like me!) Though when the time comes, they're quite possible the bravest in the room. They come from a rich family cause why not. They're omnisexaul.

Then there's Edric( heart). Friends( and enemies that he likes) call him Eddy. He's very flirty and down to have a good time. He wears what he wants and does it in ✨ style ✨. He can wear a clown suit and make it look sexy. He's asexual panromantic.

Min( spades) ! I got the name from playing Smoke and Velvet: The Gnawing Chronicles ( by @roast-ifs ) cause I was to lazy to come up with a name and it just stuck. For the most part she's more stoic than the rest. Not entirely an introvert, but not extroverted either. She's try's to keep her emotions to herself, which for the most part she's very successful at, but it can get hard when it comes to people she cares about ( both platonically and romantically). In another wip called Secrets of Swatheforn ( by @swatheford ) she's actively trying to NOT acknowledge her feeling for one of the ROs ( Cass) so that's fun. Min is a trans women, and is bisexual ( women and non-binary people)

The last one actually is the least developed out of all of them. I know that they're non-binary, and that they represent clover. I actually haven't played as them as much as say Jamie or Edric has. So yeah. They exist.

So that my very long oc journey. I don't except my creative mind to stop, but I really have to many. Sooooo yeah! That's all.

#rants n rambles #my oc shit #my ocs #my ocs are my babies #i love them dearly #choice of games #creative writing #all that jazz #thats all #have a nice day #long post

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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Hi. I really enjoy your blog and thank you for being so positive. All the negativity about last night's ep bothers me. I would love to see Dean/Cas finally have that big moment, but it wouldnt make for good story telling if we got it so easily. I have felt since s12...we are getting real personal growth! I also feel something big is coming for Dean/Cas with how they have kept them apart and all the emotional baggage getting adressed. There has been no hug either and there is so much unsaid. ❤

Yeah, I mean... I watch the show with the full knowledge that no matter how important Dean and Cas’s relationship is, even to the actual structure of the narrative, the way they’re writing the story and the actual focus of the main plot... will never focus that directly on destiel. This doesn’t mean I think destiel isn’t A Thing they are writing, just that Who Dean Is As A Person and Who Cas Is As A Person both take narrative precedence over the potential for a textual romantic relationship going forward for them.

I have no idea how to say that without sounding negative about it or drawing wank on it, which is why I don’t usually attempt to state it so blatantly in public. But I am 100% not negative about this. I’m just speaking about it from a narrative structure perspective here, which I’ve been yelling FOR LITERAL YEARS bears a close resemblance to the structure of 1001 Nights, and the Scheherazade/Shahryar relationship. Their romance is NEVER in the foreground of the tale, and yet somehow the entirety of 1001 Nights IS THE OVERARCHING STRUCTURE OF THEIR ROMANCE. Other aspects of the story are more pressing (like Scheherazade having sacrificed herself in the attempt to stop other women from being killed every morning, but not actually wanting to die herself because She Is Smart and Has A Plan and showed up with a buttload of awesome stories to slowly guide her plan to fruition). All those stories she weaves, in the gaps between them, she and Shahryar slowly fall in love. It’s not something they confess out loud, but it is something they both gradually begin to feel and to understand. Their interpersonal side-plot grows slowly, over 1001 actual nights of storytelling and companionship, and it takes nearly THREE YEARS of constant nightly stories, never letting one story end at the wrong time (at daybreak, when Shahryar might choose to kill her, but always timing it JUST RIGHT so that he’d ask for another story to fill the hours until dawn... which would inevitably be interrupted on a cliffhanger with words unspoken still between them... interrupting moose, anyone? That would be Scheherazade’s sister, Dunyazade, who accompanied her on what was supposed to be Scheherazade’s literal last night on Earth, but whose prompting and strategic interruptions actually furthered the romantic tension growing between Scheherazade and Shahryar, preventing their story from coming to an end too soon).

So while Scheherazade and Shahryar and their slow fall into love with one another is literally fundamental to the entire narrative, there was no way for any of it to pay off before the end of the larger narrative, you know?

If Scheherazade can patiently continue spinning out her stories, setting her own eventual (hopeful!) personal happiness aside because she sees the bigger picture at stake, then I can certainly wait until the end of Supernatural, however long it continues until its story is finally done.

Does this mean I’m saying that romantic love confessions and a clear, undeniable canon romantic relationship will factor in to the ending of the series? Nope. I have no guarantees to offer. But it does mean that as long as the show keeps factoring the fundamental importance of their relationship into the larger overarching narrative, as well as their own personal character arcs, and continuing to poke at it both through narrative mirrors and textually laying Big Questions for them out on the table, then I’m gonna be Scheherazade about it.

Every episode begins (emotionally, for me) with the Dread Pirate Roberts having spared Westley’s life because of True Love, and telling him “I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.” But then he doesn’t... and he continues not killing him, because it was all about true love. (yes, I’m saying the Princess Bride is a twist on the 1001 Nights narrative, at least insofar as The Dread Pirate Roberts persona goes. I mean... the parallel goes a lot deeper than this, into so much more of the metaphorical journey, the Hero’s Journey to prove himself worthy to his True Love, the quest for justice when he doubts the strength of that love to transcend death, after it was literally stolen away from him... I mean, this parallel also runs deep).

So that’s where we are with destiel. I’m perfectly 100% happy with that. Because I’m content to engage with the narrative they are actually presenting, and not delusionally projecting my own desire for Dean and Cas to just be happy now onto it in a way that it just does not exist in canon, you know?

All that said, YES. How long has it been since we’ve had a simple, “Hello, Dean.” Or even a HUG between them... since 13.06? YIKES THAT IS A WHILE. And we didn’t even get to hear the Hello, Dean at the end of 13.05 that we all yelled at the TV to fill that silent gap when Dean answered the phone and it was Cas calling him.

I choose to believe that the show is following their own unofficial theme song in this regard, though. They’ll be able to be happy at the end of the road. “There’ll be peace when you are done.” And until then, they’ve got a lot of road to cover, and a long way to go, and a lot of extraneous baggage to deal with. But they’re getting there, because they’ve always been headed there, even when they weren’t entirely sure where “there” was, you know?

But now we know Dean DOES know, at least in a general way. He’s not longing for a life that isn’t his anymore. He doesn’t feel cheated out of the white picket fence, apple pie life anymore. He’s made his own family (which absolutely does include Cas), and he recognizes there’s still work for them to do, but Dean himself is good with that. He’s in a strangely healthier place than he’s ever been in his whole entire life, including 4-year-old him who never knew death and fire and tragedy.

And that’s absolutely something to carry forward, wherever the road may lead.

And that’s also why I’ll eternally be frustrated with fandom bitterness over the literal structure of the entire narrative. I mean, this is not gonna change. This is the main story they are telling, and how they’re telling it. I only hope that being able to get some perspective on that will help people keep all of this in mind and truly appreciate the beauty of it all. This is why I personally feel this has the potential to be the greatest love story ever told, because it’s so much more than just an angel falling from heaven and raising a man from hell, and then meeting in the middle. It’s about BOTH of them, their choices, their failures and successes, and this entire process of understanding who they are in the larger structure of the universe, and who they could potentially be to one another.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

#spn 14.13 #spn 300 #destiel #spn s14 spoilers #the scheherazade of supernatural #this is how stories work #and saying destiel isn't the central focus of the story isn't diminishing its presence in the larger narrative #sorry if i kinda ranted and rambled at you here but this is so important to me #aurenia heart

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/mum-was-and-still-is-a-very-funny-person-i-want-to-show-theres-another-side-to-dementia/

'Mum was and still is a very funny person. I want to show there's another side to dementia'

THE DYNAMICS OF my relationship with my mother have greatly changed over the last few years, as I’ve become one of her carers while she lives with dementia.

Our evolved bond has really opened my eyes into seeing how we as a society address our older generations and the illness. As a dancer, I’m well versed in supporting my fellow dancers in our movements – so I’ve created a show called Assisted Solo, where I want to explore and highlight how important it is that we all support each other to live our best ‘solo’.

The theme of dementia and working with my mum was something that happened secondarily – it wasn’t the initial idea. When I make my work I like to go into the studio and see what happens. Work surprises you – your subconscious surprises you.

I’m one of five siblings. I was looking after my mum and I thought this is what it is, I am assisting her in her solo. At the same time it is not always clear who is assisting who, because I am learning a lot from this experience.

‘There’s space for humour’

Luca Truffarelli

Often when I talk to people about my mum’s dementia they go “that’s awful”. It is, but it’s something gradual and it’s been happening gradually over the years. There’s space for humour, space for laughter. It’s not all doom and gloom. In my work I use humour a lot. Mum was a funny person and still is a very funny person. I want to show there is another side to this situation.

It sounds really weird but one of the experiences that I have had from looking after my mother, and I’m sure my other brothers agree: once you accept what is going on and you learn to live with it, there are positives in it. It feels with my mum my relationship has now gone full circle – I have gone from being the child and being cared for to being the carer and I know her as a more childlike person.

One of the beautiful things I notice is the essence of her is still exactly the same.

She doesn’t always know my name. She’ll randomly say names, and sometimes she’ll get it. And sometimes I could be her father, sometimes I could be her son, maybe her husband or her lover. She might not always be able to pinpoint who it is but there’s love there.

We filmed some footage for the show in my mum’s house. Suddenly we found we had all these hours of material and it became clear she was integral to the show. There was an overarching theme that connects what we’re doing in Assisted Solo.

The thing I’m trying to do is show: this is life.

A lot of people suffer from dementia in this country, and I wanted to show it’s not all terrible. It’s difficult to explain, but I think among the changes in my mum and the tough situations there’s also space for laughter and personal growth.

[embedded content]

Source: Philip Connaughton/Vimeo

‘You have to find something beautiful in everything’

It seems like two or three years, but it’s actually six or seven years since my mum got sick. It starts in such a subtle way, there are so many ways of denying it. Oh, she’s just being like this, just being like that.

I was ill and feeling sorry for myself and I went to see her, and she cheered me up. When I went to her again the next day she didn’t remember. I realised oh God, chunks of her memoryare disappearing. Like my father’s funeral, she initially forgot my father’s funeral.

And they’re the tough moments, but once you face things and accept the situation I think you can still find beauty in your relationship. I love her so much, she is so beautiful – and there is so much to learn from her still.

One of the things that I’ve really noticed is that her filter has been removed. It means she’s incredibly open and this really comes through in the video material. It’s incredibly beautiful to watch and that’s why we decided to use it.

There is a moral dilemma around that. She can’t make the decision – I have to make the decision for her . I am very protective of her, I want to show her in a very particular light but I want to get the message across as well.

My brothers are understanding about the show. It’s so important to tell this story, it’s one of the most important things I have done.

I think it’s too much to say that people will come away thinking ‘oh dementia is great’, because it isn’t. It’s very difficult. But as long as there is love you can get through all sorts of things. Love conquers all: it sounds like such a ridiculous cliche but it is true.

My dance show is about the idea of dependency and being independent. It explores the concept of ‘solo’ and what a solo really is. The reason I’ve called it Assisted Solo is because even in my work, when I’ve danced solos in the past, you’re never really alone. There are all these people making it happen and supporting you and this is true in life.

Having someone dependent on you

Source: Luca Truffarelli

As a gay man, I don’t think I’ll have kids. The only thing I’m solely responsible for is my dog and the biggest question that arises from this situation is, ‘who will look after him while I’m away?’

With my mum I have come to understand what it is to have somebody completely dependent on you and the responsibility of having a person who needs you 100%. That’s one thing that has been really tough but beautiful.

It’s also broken an intimacy barrier. By keeping her in her own home, I need to deal with the everyday realities of caring for someone, like washing her and changing nappies. This isn’t always easy but I know my family’s situation is a luxury, as there are five of us sharing the responsibility.

I also think about how caring for someone can have an impact on one’s own sexuality. How do you still manage to feel sexually attractive and in the mood for physical contact after caring for someone in this way? These are the things I also touch upon in the piece.

Caring for my mum has been a really beautiful experience. We can get so caught up in society worrying about intimacy and body contact, and thinking ‘oh that’s weird, that’s strange, I couldn’t do that with my own mum’. But why not? It’s just another human body and it’s a person who’s changed a lot of your nappies! I for one am very glad I’ve got to go on this journey.

Philip Connaughton is a contemporary dancer and creator of Assisted Solo, which will debut at the Dublin Fringe Festival from 7 – 15 September, followed by a performance at the Everyman Theatre on 22 September. For tickets, visit the Dublin Fringe Festival website.

Source: http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/phillip-connaughton-mother-dementia-assisted-solo-dance-4218154-Sep2018/

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Baltimore mother seeks justice years after son was killed by police

Years before Black Lives Matter, cases like Kevin Coopers vanished into obscurity now theres hope for police reform, if it can survive the Trump administration

Greta Carter-Willis has spent a lot of time praying, crying and thinking at the threshold between the kitchen and dining room of her south-west Baltimore home.

It was at that spot, nearly eleven years ago that a Baltimore City police officer, barely a year out of the academy, shot and killed her 14-year-old son Kevin Cooper.

His body was laying right there, she said, gesturing. We can make little changes, paint, take the carpet up, but it still remains the same. I have to live with that mental vision in my mind all my life This is my home, I cant just up and move.

It was the sense of pain and injustice around that incident that brought Carter-Willis to the Baltimore federal courthouse on Thursday, to speak in favor of the agreement negotiated between the city, its police force, and the Department of Justice in the wake of the Freddie Gray case. The future of the agreement to reform the citys policing, known as a consent decree, was thrown into uncertainty Monday after attorney general Jeff Sessions released a memo asking to halt its implementation against the wishes of the city mayor, police commissioner and general public.

Despite a cold, driving rain, dozens of residents lined up for their three minutes to address the federal judge in the case and implore him not to delay the agreement, as the Trump administration requested earlier this week. Speakers represented faith groups, high school students, non-profits, law-enforcement and like Carter-Willis, mothers of those killed by police. And despite their disparate backgrounds, the overarching position of the city was clear: Justice delayed is justice denied, as more than one speaker quoted from the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

It was a must that I push my way down to that courthouse and let that federal judge know, please do not hold this consent decree, Carter-Willis told the Guardian. Its too late for my son, but it will help somebody elses child and it will make it better for the next generation and its a right step for this department. Its a right step for this city to have them be accountable to another agency. Because as long as theyre policing themselves, its not gonna get any better.

Late Friday, a federal judge agreed with Carter-Willis and the others who trudged out to throw their weight behind the agreement, tossing out Sessions request for more time. Still, the saga clearly indicates that project of cultivating progressive reform in police departments nationwide no longer has an eager partner in Washington DC.

Kevin Cooper at age 12. Photograph: Greta Carter-Willis

It was just a plastic dustpan

As is the case in many fatal police incidents, it was Carter-Willis herself who called 911 in 2006, hoping for some assistance as her son experienced an emotional disturbance. He had knocked over his TV during an argument, and tossed some clothes out the window. Normal teenager stuff, as Carter-Willis described it.

After a short chat with officers the situation had resolved enough that one of the responding officers left. The second, Roderick Mitter, stayed behind to finish up paperwork when tensions ratcheted back up.

The officer walked past and Kevin was mumbling, Carter-Willis said. The officer asks him what are you saying and he says Im not talking to you so he just kept walking.

As Carter-Willis tells it, the officer began following the teen through different rooms, jawing with the teen as both grew more and more agitated. She recalls asking the officer several times to leave her home.

In the kitchen, as the rankling grew louder, Cooper picked up a plastic dustpan. The kind you get at the 99 cent store, Carter-Willis said.

Her version and the police version begin to diverge here. Carter-Willis says her son was merely holding the dustpan; police say he assaulted the officer with it, breaking it over his head and lunging at him with the jagged plastic.

In either case what happened next is clear. Mitter maced Kevin, deemed it ineffective, drew his gun, and fired. The bullet, which penetrated the teens heart, likely killed him instantly, Carter-Willis would later learn.

From there, the aftermath was predictable. Police held a press conference that day and declared the shooting justified. The officer was not charged with a crime, and has since been promoted to detective. The city offered Carter-Willis a pittance of a settlement in a civil case that her family ultimately lost to the citys well-resourced lawyers. Years before Mike Brown and the rise of Black Lives Matter, cases like this often vanished into obscurity without attracting protests, headlines, national attention or trending hashtags.

They just discarded him like a bag of trash, like his life meant nothing, said Carter-Willis. But his life did mean something. It meant something to me, to the community. He was an uncle, a neighbor, a classmate.

Greta Carter-Wilis in her home at the location where her son, Kevin Cooper, was shot and killed by the Baltimore Police Department in 2006. Photograph: Jamiles Lartey for the Guardian

Grave concerns

Carter-Willis keeps a hatbox in her home jammed with press clippings, important documents and pictures related to her sons case. Among them, the full DOJs 2016 findings on the Baltimore Police Department (BPD).

The report found broadly, a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct by city police, characterized by rank racial bias and warrantless targeting of black residents.

When the DoJ report came out, i started crying, Carter-Willis said. I felt vindicated with that report because you had outside ears, you had outside eyes to understand that what [black residents] are saying is really happening.

They werent talking about Kevin, she added, but they were.

In conjunction with that report the Obama DoJ, the city of Baltimore and its police department entered into negotiation for a consent decree, or a joint reform agreement enforceable by a federal judge. Similar agreements had been utilized in other problem departments like Los Angeles, New Orleans and Detroit to achieve reform after systemic use of force or discrimination issues were discovered. That agreement had already been signed by all parties before the Obama DoJ left power and was awaiting a public comment before it would, in all likelihood, have gone into effect later this year.

Enter the Trump Administration. Trump campaigned on a platform opposing virtually any scrutiny of law enforcement, and selected an attorney general in Jeff Sessions who most expected to embrace the same. Earlier this week, Sessions made good on that expectation, filing a memo to the Baltimore court charged with enforcing the consent decree there, asking for a 90-day pause to review and assess the agreement. The DoJ also asked the judge to postpone Thursdays public hearing, a request that was denied, setting the stage for Carter-Willis and nearly 50 other Baltimoreans to weigh in before the court.

John Gore, the head of the civil rights division for the DoJ, had a lonely job Thursday. Of the dozens of speakers, he was the only person to express any interest in slowing down or potentially not following through on the agreement, citing grave concerns.

Those concerns were not shared by Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh or police commissioner Kevin Davis, both of whom pledged to move ahead with the reforms with or without the DoJ. Both lamented however, that the speed of the roll-out and the public trust would both be hampered without federal involvement.

Paradoxically, Sessions was arguing that the federal government had no place in telling local law enforcement how to reform, and simultaneously, telling the officials in Baltimore that they were wrong about the path they laid out with the Obama administration in negotiating the consent decree. Gores concerns were also not shared by any of the public who showed up to comment. Indeed the handful of voices who didnt support the consent decree at the public hearing did so because they found it not strong enough.

All this paperwork and all this stuff yall doing is just so they can get federal money to keep on doing what they are doing, said Marcella Hill with her voice breaking. Like Carter-Willis, Hills son was shot and killed by BPD. Nothing is going to change the attitude and the personality of [the police] until someone goes to jail.

The many fractures

On Friday, Justice James Bredar approved the agreement over the objections of the Department of Justice. It would be extraordinary for the court to permit one side to unilaterally amend an agreement already jointly reached and signed, the judge wrote. Now it is time to enter the decree and thereby require all involved to get to work on repairing the many fractures so poignantly revealed by the record.

Thats good news for advocates who want to see police reform initiatives struck in the Obama era survive the Trump administration. Many saw the DoJs attempt to wriggle out of the Baltimore consent decree as a trial balloon for trying to back out of older agreements that are already in place with other cities. But in what has become a minor theme of the Trump presidency, its possible, if not likely, that federal judge rulings like Bredars will stymie future attempts in place.

Generally speaking, to modify a consent decree you have to demonstrate that circumstances have changed, so I think a lot of judges are going to be skeptical if DoJ says Weve completed this review and turns out everything is fine in these departments, said Christy Lopez, a former DoJ official during the Obama administration and the leader of the team that produced the departments investigation into the Ferguson Police Department.

It may not be that blatant or easy but what this does signal, is that when monitors come in and say Hey, [the police department] is not there yet or Hey, they need to do this to make this thing work, DoJ is not going to have their back on that. DoJ is not going to be on the side of reform any more. And that can have a tremendous influence, Lopez told the Guardian.

Sessions has claimed that his department remains committed to reform in Baltimore and elsewhere, but the language used in the memo explicitly questions the role of the federal government in that reform, and seems to question the premise that many of the reforms rest on that systemic discrimination is endemic to certain departments.

The misdeeds of individual bad actors should not impugn or undermine the legitimate and honorable work that law enforcement officers and agencies perform in keeping American communities safe, the Sessions memo from Monday reads.

If they want to talk about actions of a few bad apples, then yes, it is clear that some police officers are more likely to use force and much more likely to commit misconduct than others, said Sam Sinyangwe, an activist and data scientist with Campaign Zero. Almost never are they held accountable though. We need to put in place systems and structures that can ensure accountability, and those are the types of things that these consent decrees are trying to produce, and that are now being undermined.

As for Carter-Willis, shes just glad judge Bredar heard her appeal and decided to move ahead. It would restore my trust, she paused, somewhat But im still going to be vigilant. Im still always going to be watching. Im still keeping an eye on them not just for my grandchildren, but for my great-grandchildren.